Typical Day for Neuro MSTP

[jwtaylor]

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Im a sophomore in college, i've never done research before, but it's something im very interested in. im studying neuroscience and i'd obviously love to do brain research, after all ramachandran is my idol. ive been looking into the md/phd thing. im interested in what a typical day in the life of someone studying neuro in an mstp. i know the amount of research you're actually doing fluctuates throughout the years, but can someone give me a break down. what kind of research are you doing? what are the day to day physical tasks of your research? how much stress does the research in conjunction with med school cause? im severely interested in the nitty gritty of this.

 

[tedrik]

Im a sophomore in college, i've never done research before, but it's something im very interested in. im studying neuroscience and i'd obviously love to do brain research, after all ramachandran is my idol. ive been looking into the md/phd thing. im interested in what a typical day in the life of someone studying neuro in an mstp. i know the amount of research you're actually doing fluctuates throughout the years, but can someone give me a break down. what kind of research are you doing? what are the day to day physical tasks of your research? how much stress does the research in conjunction with med school cause? im severely interested in the nitty gritty of this.

During the med school years of the MSTP you will not be doing any research. This isn't true for everyone because I have met MSTPers who do some research concurrently with med school, but this is uncommon.

During grad school you will be doing experiments just like any grad student. For neuroscience, your day-to-day tasks could include any of several experiments such as: electrophysiology, behavioral, imaging, theoretical, etc. And each of these are often used in combination with various molecular and biochemical techniques. Depending on the lab, the applications of these techniques could fall anywhere along the spectrum of basic to clinical research.

I don't know much about Ramachandran's research, but I've seen some books of his on the mind-body problem and consciousness. If this is what you're interested in, then there's lots of labs that approach this problem using both clinical and basic approaches. Since you named him as your idol I'm assuming you're interested in this, so you might want to go to the lab websites of some of these consciousness guys and see exactly what they do. UCSD is still good for this (post-Crick) with Gerald Edleman, but I'd look at the Pitt/CMU MSTP because CMU has a great consciousness research center. You could also check the websites of Kristof Kotch for some more computation stuff or Rodolfo Linas for physiology.

I hope I answered your question, but I'm not sure exactly what type of answer you were looking for. My advice would be to join a lab and see how you like it.

Good for you for starting early!!

 

[jwtaylor]

thanks for your reply, you definitely answered my question. ill have to check out those website for the labs, i never really thought about doing that yet. i really appreciate your help!

 

[Vader]

If you are interested, I would highly recommend getting involved in a laboratory studying some aspect of neuroscience. Typically, MD/PhD programs require a large amount of research experience of applicants, so it is best to get started now.

At any rate, my lab uses mouse genetics to study genes that control development of the forebrain. This typically involves breeding and genotyping mutant mice, harvesting embryos/dissecting brains, and performing in situ hybridization, immunohistochemistry and other histologic techniques on whole mount embryos/brains or tissue sections. Since we are focusing on an in vivo system, a working knowledge of the neuroanatomy is essential.

I did my two required laboratory rotations the summer before and after the first year of medical school. During the first two years of medical school, I did no research, but took some graduate courses.

Neuroscience is an awesome (and very broad) field--try to find some area in which you are particularly interested and pursue it!